1. Field of the Invention
The present disclosure relates to a fingerprint authentication method and a fingerprint authentication apparatus using the same, and more particularly to a method and an apparatus for authenticating a fingerprint by selecting target pixels to calculate correlation scores from pixels in a fingerprint image obtained through a fingerprint sensor having a very small sensing area, calculating correlation scores on the basis of the selected pixels, and authenticating the fingerprint based on the calculated correlation scores.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recently, as a security device becomes increasingly more important, an authentication apparatus using various types of biometric information have been developed. For example, various methods using a part of a human body such as a face, a fingerprint, an iris and/or a blood vessel as the biometric information are applied to the authentication apparatus.
Among these methods, the fingerprint authentication method is implemented by comparing an inputted fingerprint image of a user to be authenticated with a registered fingerprint image. Such a method may be applied to a small device including a portable electronic device such as a tablet, e-reader and a smartphone.
The fingerprint sensor used in this kind of the portable electronic device may have a very small sensing area. In this case, the fingerprint image obtained through the fingerprint sensor may not include sufficient minutiae such as bifurcations, ridge endings, and cores for the comparison. It is hard to ensure authentication accuracy with such an image which does not include sufficient minutiae.
Therefore, in order to ensure the authentication accuracy, the fingerprint authentication method for use in an apparatus having the very small sensing area employs a process of calculating correlation scores with respect to pixels in the fingerprint image instead of the aforementioned minutiae. However, it takes quite a long time to calculate the correlation scores with respect to all pixels in the fingerprint image.